Katyn (2007)
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Runtime: 2h 1min

One of Andrzej Wajda’s most personal films, Katyń could only be made after 1989, following Poland’s regained independence. It was born out of the director’s personal experiences—his father, an officer in the Polish Army, was murdered by the NKVD in Kharkiv in 1940. Wajda rejected many screenplay versions before ultimately choosing to tell the story from the perspective of the women waiting for their husbands and sons—first during the German and Soviet occupations, and later after the end of the war, when communist rule was established in Poland in 1945. At that time, the official Soviet narrative blamed the crime on the Nazis, depriving families even of the right to grieve.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.